


With a Bang

by MrProphet



Series: The Enemy of my Enemy [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M, Innuendo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 06:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10735881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	With a Bang

_Free port of Kenang  
_ _Thera_

Kenang was a free port, one of the few places in the galaxy where a sufficient diversity and volume of interstellar traffic passed close by that it became cost-effective for the local government to establish a major centre for trade and resupply. As was the case with most such ports, Kenang had become the centre of the economy of Thera, especially as Thera had no Stargate. The only way on or off was by ship, but the space lanes were busy and prosperous. Pretty much any kind of business could be done in Kenang, however unsavoury, so long as all parties paid their port fees at the Reeve's office.

The good properties were located on the main orbital platform, but lesser traders, bounty hunters, mercenaries and blackmarketeers kept offices on the Screw, a spiralling platform a mile wide suspended precariously by a mass of cables depending from the main orbital platform. All of the offices were much alike, varying only in their state of decay. The lower the level, and the closer to the central hub of the screw and the primary ascenders, the better the neighbourhood. One such office, and the small residence attached to it, belonged to Claire Tobias, a lieutenant in the United States Air Force before a court martial found her guilty of high treason.

Considering that her current base of operations was a cramped, sporadically vermin-infested, five-room box, attached to a feat of engineering that defied all common sense each and every day by not collapsing to the ground in flames, Claire Tobias was surprisingly sanguine.

"It may not look like much," she told her guest as they entered. "But it's warm and dry, and the Theran wolf-rats only come up this high once a year during the mating season. Can you believe that?" She asked. "This port has been in place so long that the local wildlife has built a one-hundred mile helter-skelter into their mating habits."

"Compared to Tollana, this place is incredibly primitive," Karloth replied.

"Yeah, well you might want to keep that arrogance down," Tobias recommended. "Beating a man unconscious and throwing him into a pit full of wolf-rats is pretty primitive too, but you still end up dead. They're a touchy people, the Therans, and like anyone whose livelihood depends on outsiders, they're rabidly xenophobic." She opened a cabinet and locked her accelerated particle weapon into its recharging slot.

"I'm not complaining," he assured her. "Any port in a storm, and the company is good."

"You should have seen my digs before this," Tobias told Karloth, acknowledging the compliment with a nod as she led him through to the living room. "An eight-by-twelve on death row at the State's expense was a nice change from windswept temples on godforsaken backwater planets that had been abandoned as uninhabitable for a reason. Have a seat; I'll get you a drink."

Tobias had managed to find a battered couch of almost-terrestrial style, to make the place feel more homely, and Karloth settled himself on one of the patched cushions. In the corner was a TV set that looked like a sphere of jet until the screen was activated. It wasn't quite like home, but it was close enough. That the absence of a Stargate made it unlikely the SGC would find her, and even less likely that they would ever be able to extradite her was the main appeal, but the existence of lowest common denominator, mass-media broadcasting had played a large role in Tobias' choice of home base.

"You seem to have gone to some lengths to make this place seem like home," Karloth noted.

"I'm a home-loving gal," Tobias replied, and one of her rare flashes of genuine vulnerability showed through the flippancy. She quashed it at once, replacing it with a feigned expression of regret for the home she had tried to protect and been forced to leave behind her. It was one of her many paradoxes: That she tried to elicit sympathy for her loneliness, while simultaneously hiding the genuine sadness inside her. "Here." She handed Karloth a heavy, leaded-crystal glass, half-filled with a pungent liquor.

"Nothing but the good stuff," Karloth said. "Your health," he offered.

"Cheers." She drained her glass, then grabbed the bottle from the side and sat down, one leg crossed under her. "These glasses are all I have left," she remarked. "From home. They were a present from my grandmother when I graduated from the Academy. I made a detour to pick them up after I was sprung from prison and kept them in my pack all the time until I got set up here. I used to have six," she added. "Now I have two, and some pieces."

"You have nothing else?"

She shrugged. "Not from ‘home' home. Some Air Force bits and pieces, but no personal effects. I had a few little things – a penknife, a ring; little things – but I lost those when Bastet captured me. They're probably all in her mothership still; or in Yu's." She poured and downed another glass, before offering the bottle to Karloth.

"I understood that you were serving a Goa'uld named Turak," Karloth said.

"I was working for him; not serving. It was a job for money, rather than a calling. I was captured a few days before my contract ended, and I hadn't been planning to renew. I saw the way the wind was blowing, and I should have got out earlier."

"Why didn't you?"

"I had a contract," she replied. "You sign a contract and take your payment, you go through with the job; that's how it works."

Karloth nodded his understanding.

"Do you know why I like this place?" Tobias asked.

"No. Why?"

Tobias sighed, fondly. "The planet Thera: Population three billion; sustainable population two-point-eight billion. The economy is entirely reliant on trade, and all the wealth is focused in Baras, because that's where Kenang is. These people have built a huge, vertically stacked city just to make money. The people who control the trade are rich, those who aren't range from comfortable through struggling to the sixth of the population who live in third world conditions; not to mention the two-point-three billion who aren't Barasan, they just get policy dictated to them by the Chancer.

"I love this place because Thera is Earth and Baras is America; a hundred years down the line. Mark my words, Karloth; this is where my homeworld will end up." She smiled. "I also love that from the same root as Chancellor they've called their leader the ‘Chancer', but that's neither here nor there."

"You really miss it, don't you?"

Tobias forced down another pang of loss, this time trying to look tough. "I'm a survivor," she said. "I'll get by." She stood up. "It's been a long trip, and I'm tired. Kitchen's in there, bathroom's through there, and that's my bedroom," she told him, pointing to the doors off the living room. "You can sleep on the couch or in the bed; your choice."

"What about you?" Karloth asked.

Tobias smiled, invitingly. "Well, I'll be in the bed of course."

 

All things considered, it was not what Tobias had been expecting. Throughout her alliance with Karloth and the explosives expert Rayker, she had wondered what it would be like to sleep with the Tollan, and she had always imagined that it would be a fairly cold, unsatisfying experience. He was always so measured and controlled that Tobias had pictured him taking notes when he asked: ‘How was it for you?' She could simply have skipped the whole business and gotten on with things of course, but after a week in the galley cabins of a space freighter – they had ditched their stolen teltac in case Anubis had some means of tracking it that would have defeated Karloth's technology – fending off the advances of a lecherous, betentacled captain she was itching to let off steam and unwind. Besides, she decided; she had to know.

With the deed done, Tobias had no regrets about it. It turned out that the Tollan were not without emotions, they just controlled and hid them very well, and the same passion that ignited Karloth in rage when he was hurting Goa'uld seemed to grip him in bed. Tobias smiled fondly as she looked at his sleeping form, before turning to retrieve the small pistol from her bedside cabinet.

One sin of which Claire Tobias could never be accused was sentimentality. While she loved her country and her family, she had no sacred cows. She had described herself as a survivor and that was entirely true; she intended to carry on living, and damn anyone who got in her way. Karloth was not in her way exactly, but he was an unnecessary complication, and besides his Tollan devices might fetch enough on the black market that this whole sorry business would not be a complete bust. She levelled the pistol at his back, and eased off the safety catch.

"My weapon is on the chair," Karloth told her, without turning over. "One shot at full power will kill me without pain, and without damaging your sheets," he added.

Tobias sprang backwards, struggling to her feet but keeping the pistol pointed steadily at his back.

Karloth turned over and looked at her.

"You knew," she accused.

"Yes."

"Why...?"

"I had three offers," he explained. "Xu's, Rayker's and yours. Xu wanted...Well, you know what; he made you the same offer. Rayker felt that we should get rid of you and split the takings from the sale of the Pax Perpeti between the two of us; you made much the same proposal. He sweetened the deal by offering me two of his sisters in marriage, while planning to exploit my knowledge for his gain; you did the same by offering yourself while planning to kill me.

"I liked your offer better."

"God damn you!" Tobias spat.

"You might want to know," Karloth said. "That I had expected us both to be dead about an hour ago. The Pax should have wiped out all humanoid life in the galaxy by now; I guess those interfering do-gooders from the SGC figured out a way to stop it."

"Why?" Tobias demanded. "Why let me get this close?"

"Because I thought it was the end," he said. "What better way to spend my last hours than in the arms of the most beautiful woman I have ever met."

Tobias blushed, trying to hide how much his flattery pleased her. "Weren't you married?" She asked.

Karloth looked away with a pained expression. "I prefer not to speak of my family," he reminded her. "But yes, I was married. I loved my wife, with all of my heart, and I would never have betrayed her. She is gone, however, and so I do not think it is betrayal to admit that you are far sexier than she was."

Tobias smiled. "You're good," she commended, lowering the pistol.

"Thank you," he replied. "I've worked hard to become so. It's good to know that my forty-eight years in the Tollan Intelligence Service were not wasted."

"How old are you?" Tobias asked.

"Eighty-three," Karloth replied.

"You look good for it."

"I work out," he assured her. "Also, I am impervious to most diseases and resistant to a number of factors which contribute to the effects of ageing. With continuing access to Tollan medicine I might have lived for over three hundred years; even now I could easily make one-hundred and fifty."

Tobias set the pistol down, and slid back into the bed beside him. "Could this effect..."

"You have already been exposed to many of the rigours which do not affect me," Karloth replied. "And I lack the means to reverse those effects, but with the technology at my disposal you might live to celebrate your one-hundred-and-thirtieth birthday."

Tobias raised an eyebrow. "I'm beginning to think that there might be more mileage in our partnership than I previously suspected," she admitted.

"I had hoped that you might," he replied.

"So," she asked. "What is it that you want?"

Karloth kissed her, hungrily.

"Apart from that," she said.

Karloth smiled, rakishly. "I want to destroy the Goa'uld," he said. "Wipe them out, completely, along with anything they have touched and tainted with their evil, and erase all memory of their passing."

"You think big; I like that in a man."

"For one man, this is a tall order," Karloth admitted. "Less so for two."

"And in return I get to live an extra sixty years?"

"Oh, more than that," he assured her. "Throughout that time, you will have perfect health. Also, while I would not be able to teach you much about our science, I am trained to build weapons and improvise equipment in the field, and I have a number of text books that you might be able to make something of. You have a fine mind."

"But primitive," Tobias replied, sourly.

"Your learning is primitive; not your mind," he assured her. "I doubt anyone else on Earth would have as good a chance of understanding Tollan science."

"Except maybe Major Carter," Tobias grumbled.

"Not even she," Karloth replied. "Besides; she was once infested by a Goa'uld. She is tainted."

"So we wipe out not only the Goa'uld, but also Tok'ra, former hosts..."

"Jaffa and anyone altered by Goa'uld breeding experiments. Their legacy must be annihilated as thoroughly as that of my people."

"I hate to shoot myself in the foot, but wouldn't the SGC..."

"It is because of the SGC and their interference that my people were destroyed!" Karloth snapped. "I would never cooperate with them!"

Tobias raised an eyebrow at Karloth's outburst. "Well then," she said. "My assistance in exchange for long life, perfect health, the science and technology of the Tollan, such as remains..."

"Oh; I forgot to mention," Karloth added. "It should not be too difficult to acquire at the same time enough material wealth to make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice."

"Now you're talking like an American," she commended. "I think we have a deal."

"Shall we shake hands on it?" Karloth asked.

Tobias gave a predatory smile. "Oh, I can think of something much more interesting," she assured him.


End file.
